“Dying each other's life, living each other's death”
- Heraclitus
The day of the ceremony, you meet with your guide; this a person from the group that performs these ceremonies - nothing uncommon here - a very normal guy with a normal family, living in a normal house of a very quiet and normal town out of Amsterdam. This is your guide, your DJ, your nurse, your friend; he is everything you are going to need on your trip. In the beginning I felt scared. Getting inside a car with a stranger, going someplace unknown and having said to no one what you were about to do. Your superego is shouting to you “dude, what the fuck are you going to do” and other shit like that so that you chicken out and go back to your normal everyday life, your normal routines, your virtual safety.
Once we enter the house, he guided me up to the attic, where he had modified the entire floor as a calm place for people to enter the true nature of the world. I laid down on an amazing sofa, covered myself with a blanket and took of my clothes except the underwear. He told me some stuff to remember during the trip because although it is all happening inside your head you are still able to feel your body.
By the time he was finished with the “protocol”, he filled a small glass with a yellowish thick fluid (like a smoothie) with the pulp of the Ayahuasca tree and told me to hold it in my arms. We meditated for a few moments, while listening to some ambient music that replicated an exotic atmosphere of mystery and magic, something transcending that by this time you were unable to decipher. After that, you take the first sip; it smells like shit. Not surprisingly, it also tastes the same. However, it compensates for the 3-day liquid fast and I just drunk the hell out of it in one sip. I laid down on the leaning sofa waiting for the second glass. Drinking this one was no less than a martyr.
After that you just cover yourself to feel the warmth of the blanket while at the same time a night-mask covers your eyes. I closed my eyes as well and tried to relax.
I cannot really find a certain point or incident that marked the exact time where everything started to happen. I remember that the music was all I was feeling and that in a sense I kind of saw or thought I saw some liquid patterns in the dark, or maybe the crests of these patterns as would have shined If the sun was hitting them with his rays. I remember that my mouth had still the nauseating taste of the plant pulp and that part of it was drooling out of my lips that were now open as if I was in a coma. And then I felt what I thought it was the cosmic power, the nature itself revealing itself out of the void of my mind, exposing her real rage and fury, making me feel so small and helpless as if saying: you pity human, you are just dust in the wind, a grain of sand that I can blow and weather away. I can do whatever I want to you, my power is immense. And she said that I felt that her power grabbed me from the torso, lift me up into the sky and then pushed me back, abruptly into the sofa, passing as a wave through my belly; I felt the middle of my body expanding, unlocking in a sense.
Then I remember that in this darkness, I saw a dark face starting to form just in front of me, as if looking straight into a mirror from a close distance; just a black figure, no characteristics, as if trying to scare me. And then…I just burst into laughter! I had been laughing for about 10 min or more straight. I cannot remember having laughed so much and so hard in my life ever. I couldn’t remember having laughed during my life in the UK at all actually. And then I started sawing images of very serious people, tv personas saying the nightly news and other serious blocks talking seriously and started laughing again. I laughed so hard that my belly hurt and Rob started laughing as well, sitting next to me and holding my hand, saying “I know Adam, Mother also has a lot of humor as well!”.
The order of the following is possibly not right; time is not really a thing that you get a grasp on during the ceremony. I remember that at some point I felt as if the lower part of my jaws and the rest of the head started moving with away from each other, as if caught into a vortex. I remember feeling my entire body shaking in the rhythm of the music, as if the air around me was water, and I was a thin leaf in the middle of a lake while the wind was just blowing a bit its surface. Starting from my toes all the way up to the head, I was literally dancing while lying on the sofa, my every cell was in tune with some invisible energy that surrounded me and called me to dance with it. I could stop it, but I didn’t want to. I tried to stand up just to see how it feels, and noticed immediately that my body was 10 times more flexible and agile that normal. I felt as if I could perform any demanding yoga posture in the blink of an eye, every effort now seemed insignificant, all I had to do is just to do it. There was no thought, no breath, and no warm-up before that. Everything was in place, as if the entire universe was moving me; not just moving me, passing through my body and flowing through my veins. I was the king of the universe, the One being, the King of the galaxy; the smallest and the largest at the same time. There was nothing else around me but pure love, joy and happiness there. I cannot possible describe it right with words…
Meanwhile, inside the dark, my brain created a sphere around my body as the center. Inside this 3dimensional sphere, there had been floating images, memories and stories, dreams and reality of my past, my future and the present, alternative timelines and fairy-tales that might never come true. All I did I was just literally dive into these segmented thoughts or dreams. It was as if my subconscious had created a space for me to look into and try to figure out things.
I saw myself married with a girl and being all together with my family back in my homeland during summer, out in the sun, eating outside, beneath a large porch. I saw me struggling to do some sort of yoga postures, failing miserably, and then saw a kid doing it, just doing it, simple and elegant, no effort, and then looking at me and smiling. I saw lots of stuff. I saw soldiers in the war just before killing innocent people. I was one of them. Time paused, for everyone there, but me, and then saw a personalization of consciousness (the Self?), trying to talk to me while holding a gun in hands, trying to shoot a kid against me ready to drop a Molotov cocktail on us. He [i.e. the Self] said about the absurdity of everything I am about to do, killing those people, taking my self so serious inside that suit, trying to make the world a better place by killing. I am about to talk back to him, he just pokes my eye and laughs. “What are you doing? What are you supposed to be doing? Don’t you see that this is all empty of any rational thinking? Think! Why are you here? Stop trying to make arguments! Think for god’s sake! Think out of the box! What are you supposed to be doing here! This is NOT your enemy! Wake up! You could have been so much more!”…and somewhere around mine/his mumbling I saw it. Another world, where humans, both killers and victims work together, up-cycling the material used for weaponry to make technological breakthroughs, disassembling rifles to create something to that would help humanity grow further. A soldier and a kid, dropping down their weapons and looking at each other. The time flows again. The rest of the soldiers waiting for a command that will never come; the kid afraid having dropped his cocktail and a soldier standing there trying to figure out what happened, giving order to the rest of his band to throw their weapons away.
I was living the whole thing right there.
I saw a man, inside an artist studio creating the world, the earth, as we know it; he formed it with materials and fresh paint as a small sphere next to his desk. He created the world. But I don’t think I remember more from this story. I don’t know even if I remember it right in the first place. Those parts though are correct. I just cannot remember more.
The trip lasted for about 6 hours.
Before you sip the pulp, you have to ask a question for Mother Ayahuasca so that she can answer for you. I asked: “what am I afraid of”. I couldn’t really figure out by that time. I never stopped thinking about it. After a few months, as I was thinking about it again, I finally saw it, I saw the answer. I am afraid of doing the step, taking the leap forward, moving to something new. My fear holds me back, the fear of failure, of anything new.
I know understand that I have to do the things I have to do without fear. I will survive it because I have people (my friends and my family) who will always be next to me to support me even if I mess up big. Move forward to find your true nature, what you really are. It is the only way.
You will never have your moments back. For us pity humans, time is linear. And you can't always have what you want. But you can definitely find someone to share the burden of life together. You are so young and healthy so don't contain yourself and don't follow the path of other people. Move forward and one day you will find something that will tell you to stop. If that moment is now though don't let it slip. At least tell him how you are feeling. Because times goes fast and there might be no other moment to say it.
Clarifications:
Please note that the entire experience is not something common for everyone. Everyone “feels” it in a different way, this is simply because each and every one of us is different and unique, and his/her uniqueness is its beauty; we also tend to have different experiences during the years of our lives and these experiences affect us, sometimes unconsciously, therefore what “mother Ayahuasca” (sometimes called “mother Earth” or “mother Nature” will show you, depends on you and on you only. If you decide to go all the way and do it, there are some things that you have to study and do first. It is important to follow these “guidelines” so as to ensure a deeper and more fulfilling trip.
There is a set of actions and non-actions that one must perform (these are optional of course, but I did them anyway). That is a very strict diet (try to eliminate animals and animal products) for at least a month (no problem here cause I was doing plant-based anyway), so sexual activity for two months (including masturbation) and 3-days prior to ceremony, only juices and soups for cleansing. It went fine in every aspect of it. The 3-day fast just before the ceremony, will make you feel so light (both physically and mentally) that you‘d wish to remain like that for the rest of your life. I had some trouble going back to my regular habits of eating but nothing serious.
--
We could never have these moments back. For us pity humans, time is linear. We can't always have what you want. But you can definitely find someone to share the burden of life together. You are so young and healthy so don't contain yourself and don't follow the path of other people. Move forward and one day you will find something that will tell you to stop. If that moment is now though don't let it slip. At least tell him how you are feeling. Because times goes fast and there might be no other moment to say that.
